Entries by Sean O'Meara

You know how renting your home can be soul-crushingly awful? Like when you complain to your landlord that your home is actually uninhabitable and the council agrees and instead of fixing the problem the landlord revenge evicts you?

Private tenants will have more electoral influence in the upcoming General Election than at any point in history. According to campaign group Generation Rent, there are 86 parliamentary seats in which the sitting MP has the vote of fewer than 35% of the tenant population. That's actually a lot...

By 2022, the UK will need at least 1.82 million engineers, scientists and technology professionals, according to Dame Prof. Ann Dowling, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. As it stands, fewer than 130,000 of those will be women.

Tipping is a complicated custom. Leave a tip in Japan and you're likely to offend, do so in Argentina and you could actually be breaking the law, but fail to leave a tip in the United States and you can expect the cold shoulder on exit.

It's approaching the middle of Movember and the desensitisation to unexpected moustaches has set in. Each year, it happens a bit faster. The first one or two you see make you wince, then you remember why that otherwise compliant looking male has a Dickensian affectation of virility atop...

Almost three quarters (72%) of UK animal rescue centres are reporting an increase in the number of neglect cases they see, according to research conducted by the UK's largest dog adoption website, DogsBlog.co.uk.

We've already got ISAs for cash and ISAs for shares and now the Government is considering a third type; an ISA for peer-to-peer and peer-to-business lenders. In his most recent budget, George Osborne announced he is considering making available an ISA for peer-to-peer lenders, so the interest they...

I'll admit it. I'll go on record and say that I wouldn't consider myself to be hardworking. If future employers or future clients are reading this, then I'm sorry, but I'm not going to lie. I am many things, but I am not one of David Cameron's hardworking people. And...

River Island has removed a t-shirt from its website after heavy criticism on social media for the crass and insensitive slogan it bore. However, their "Homeless - New York City" t-shirt, which features a picture of a tent and is described by the store as "a quirky talking point," remains...

Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) - the firm at the centre of a 2011 global health scare - was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to four years in jail this week. PIP sold faulty breast implants, 42,000 of which were used in procedures on British...

After the roaring media back-slap-athon that followed the funeral of Harold Jellicoe Percival, the 99-year-old who'd served in the RAF and died earlier this month, we can now turn our attention away from old people and back to sexy, interesting young people. We've done our bit, after all.

Cheaper doesn't always mean better value, but there are certain areas of your life where a fairly rudimentary change in attitude could save you money. Often, it's just a refusal to pick up new consumer habits that prevents us from paying less. So when free broadband, free computer...

Sandie Shaw, who chairs the very worthwhile Featured Artists Coalition, told the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee at the end of March that finance "was the biggest barrier for emerging artists," adding that the best music "comes from challenging backgrounds."

If you currently work in or aspire to work in media, music, fashion, arts or any competitive creative industry, you're most likely used to people expecting your labour for free. For freelancers it's called working "on spec," for people seeking in-house roles, your golden opportunity to work for free comes...

The government this week announced that it would introduce independent medical panels to assess potentially fraudulent whiplash claims. This is a distinct improvement on the idea that floated just before February's insurance industry summit; a minimum collision speed threshold of 15 mph.

In February this year, I was the victim of a humiliatingly rudimentary scam. In fact, saying scam probably lends what happened to me an undeserved kudos, as if the scammer was a snappily dressed confidence trickster who stole my heart before stealing my savings. What I fell for...

In 1999, T.V Smith, founder of the pioneering punk band The Adverts, sang "And I pay more for my food 'cause the supermarket's too far... It's expensive being poor because everything costs more." He had a point.

In America there's a name for the collection of inconveniences and expense associated...

I started to fall out of love with football about three years ago. A general apathy would wash over me after games, even when my team won. Beating Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool (away), and Manchester City (this all happened in one season) had started to feel no different to when...